


Prelude to a Teambuilding Exercise

by ursahelianthus



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Flynn with his sleeves rolled up, and having feelings, how much subtext can they stuff into ten sentences, lots of feelings, more feelings than dialogue, pre-Delta Blues, they're just walking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-28 00:05:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15696129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ursahelianthus/pseuds/ursahelianthus
Summary: He continued to trail her like a golden retriever, albeit one with two guns, at least one knife, and possibly even that awl she saw him eyeing as they passed a leatherworking shop earlier. Okay, so maybe he was more like a guard dog – watchful, protective, capable of growling and great violence.





	Prelude to a Teambuilding Exercise

**Author's Note:**

> On one of a couple imaginary extra missions between the JFK and Delta Blues episodes. Season 2 went so fast, I figured they could use some more time to marinate in their emotional angst and also to teambuild. Hopefully this gets them to a place where Lucy would be comfortable with Flynn lifting her down from the Lifeboat (swoon).

After the Salem incident, Flynn tended to follow just behind and to the right of Lucy on missions. At first it was unnerving, his silent presence looming, tension radiating from his body as if he were perpetually waiting to strike. She figured he was hovering, eager to make Rittenhouse pay and making sure she didn’t screw anything up, valiantly restraining himself from his preferred strategy of shock and awe. But three missions in and he hadn’t interfered (much). Despite the smart mouth, he listened carefully to her theories, always let her take point when approaching a contemporary, and stayed oddly respectfully at the edge of her personal space – no closer, but no further if he could help it. She had acquired a shadow. 

The four of them were walking back to the Lifeboat together after ditching their stolen cars at the edge of the woods, Wyatt and Rufus in front hacking away at the underbrush, and Flynn behind her as usual, noiselessly bringing up the rear. He had kept his expression unreadable through most of this mission and the last, had stopped looking at her like she was the answer to his prayers or the near-mythical figure from her journal. Sure, she had broken him out of prison, but her carelessness had put him there in the first place. Unreadable was better than outright glaring, she supposed…he was really very good at death-stares. 

Nevertheless, he continued to trail her like a golden retriever, albeit one with two guns, at least one knife, and possibly even that awl she saw him eyeing as they passed a leatherworking shop earlier. Okay, so maybe he was more like a guard dog – watchful, protective, capable of growling and great violence. And apparently on a leash, as Wyatt had so tastelessly put it, except it was becoming clear that Lucy was the one holding the other end, and she wasn’t exactly sure how that had happened. Was this a journal thing? A sorry-for-letting-you-get-stabbed thing? His natural state when not actively trying to destroy history? 

She shook her head, clearing her thoughts. This was getting weird. Flynn was a person, not a dog, and metaphors wouldn’t help her understand him. She paused to look back at him and saw that he was checking behind himself, covering their group’s tracks as best he could. At some point he had shucked his jacket and tie, leaving him in just the stolen white button-down and his holster. The open collar and rolled-up shirtsleeves lent him a charmingly casual air, but she knew he was still on high-alert as he pulled branches and brambles back into place. He turned sharply, hearing her footsteps stop, tensed again already. As far as she knew, he never actually relaxed. Never had more than one beer, never nodded off in the common area, never let the taut line of his shoulders fully slacken. Had to be tiring. 

“It’s okay,” she said quickly, schooling her expression into something she hoped looked as welcoming and nonsuspicious as possible. “Will you walk with me? We’re almost back anyways, and there’s no sign of anyone on our tail.” 

Flynn’s face blanked momentarily in surprise, but he hid it well, and with another wary glance backwards, did as she asked and came to her side. He set his stride to match hers as they started back up the path. 

She gave him a moment, then said, “So Flynn, why do you always walk just a little behind me?”

He cocked his head, impassive as ever and not in a hurry to answer, though she could practically see him trying to calculate how much to tell her. She didn’t realize that even divulging this detail might be a matter of trust. But then, they hardly ever talked when it wasn’t directly related to the mission, and she hadn’t given him much of a reason to trust her outside those parameters. She saw the second he decided, the way his gaze went from searching to steady. 

“So I can watch your six,” he finally said, voice too low for the boys to hear. “So the men we meet don’t automatically talk to me and ignore you. So if someone decides to sneak up on the history department while she’s chatting up a Senator, they have to go through me first. And I have a good vantage point, since I can see over your head anyway,” he finished with a rare grin. 

Well. That was much more specific, sweet, and logical than Lucy was expecting. “And to the right?” she managed. 

“To keep my right arm free, and my non-dominant side between us. Easier to shoot without getting you in the way,” he answered promptly.

Lucy blinked and ducked her head in acknowledgement, and Flynn returned the thanks with a small dip of his chin. They continued in silence for another half mile, until she spoke up again. 

“Will you show me what to do? To stay alert, check our surroundings, keep tabs like you do?”

Flynn looked surprised again and didn’t bother to hide it this time. “Yes,” he said slowly, eyebrow raised in question. “If that’s what you want.” 

Lucy held his gaze. “I can’t fight or shoot, and you probably don’t need me at all, but I want to be able to watch your back too.”

###### 

Flynn faltered, caught off guard by the determination in her tone, and more than a little trapped by the insistent look in her eyes. Small but fierce indeed. His first reflex was to say something snarky – _Why, Lucy, I didn’t think you cared_ – but he swallowed it down, knowing it for the defense mechanism it was. Self-preservation instinct, he supposed, borne of three long years alone and on the run. Hard to trust anyone to have your back when your wife and child get killed by the most powerful secret society bent on world domination in literally all of history. 

God, but it had been a long time since he’d had a real team. Since the days of those revolutionary campaigns in the Balkans, with comrades who he knew in his bones he could count on, brothers who were made and lost in instants. Even since the days when he was part of a cohort of analysts at the NSA, bound by security clearances and reams of confidentiality paperwork. 

He hadn’t forgotten that Agent Christopher’s (and Wyatt’s, and Rufus’) first of many objections to his joining missions was that he’s a killer. Hadn’t forgotten the horrible things he’d done, or the six-month stretch in solitary he’d served for his sins. Rufus was still skittish around him and used anger to cover it up. Wyatt was angry by default and glared a lot. Jiya actually seemed curious, though less than thrilled that he’d tried to have her boyfriend and the other members of the team killed. 

As for Lucy – in truth, he _hadn’t_ thought she cared. At least not like that, not enough to ask him to teach her how to look out for him. He hadn’t thought she could want him around at all, much less unscathed. Hadn’t dared entertain the notion. Not that she didn’t try to help him before, to empathize with him, to save him multiple times over (mostly from himself), but he always thought she only broke him out of prison because they needed his intel. He knew the others only tolerated him as an asset who was good with a gun and already read in: a time-travelling killer. In his darker moments, he felt like a chained dog they let out only to kill yet more people as they crashed through time. Who knows what kind of dungeon DHS would toss him in once this was all over. 

So Lucy’s request had thrown him. And with the way she was looking at him now – like she knew he was only human and could use some backup – he could have wept in relief. 

This wasn’t the Lucy who had handed him the journal. That woman had walked in the bar looking like a soldier who just came off a battlefield, held herself like a trained fighter, had eyes so haunted and hopeful it startled him out of the fog of his own grief. That Lucy had been on a mission to get him to believe in time travel, and she had let the exhaustion and desperation show on her face, all the while looking as though she’d seen a ghost. His check still burned with the memory of the kiss she had pressed there before slipping away. 

When he first found present Lucy, scared but defiant amongst the burning wreckage of the Hindenburg, he’d been stunned, and not in a good way. She was the greenest soldier he ever met, and she was definitely not on his side. Seemed that older Lucy hadn’t bothered to loop herself in. It made sense, but now present Lucy was well on her way to that frightening future, far from the opening salvo but not quite yet grasping the full implications of what these missions had become – total war. 

He’d seen it happen before. New soldier in the field. Someone innocent and thoroughly good drafted into a grey area so wide it was impossible to find a way out without sacrificing something of their own morality. Lucy was deep in it now. He knew it was his saving grace that she could to see the shades of nuance and motivation in his gory crusade, but he had still thought (perhaps foolishly) he might be able to keep some of that grey from getting her too. 

But here she was on the front lines, and it gutted him to know her future, to know her trials were far from over. 

Flynn blew out a breath and squared his shoulders. If these godforsaken trips back in time have taught him anything, it’s that even if he can’t change his past, he does have the power to change the future. Maybe even her future. Starting tomorrow he’d teach her as much as she would let him and pray that it helps. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

And she was right, after all. She wouldn’t be much good in a fight against a Rittenhouse goon, not without a whole lot more training, but she was sharp, and an extra set of eyes and ears could end up saving their lives. Saving his life. He was back to being stunned. It had been a long time since anyone cared to protect him.

He could see the clearing with the Lifeboat up ahead, Rufus already preparing the jump sequence, Wyatt securing the perimeter. _A team_ , he thought, looking sideways at Lucy, who was already smiling at the sight of her friends and their ride home. 

He paused, watched as she took an extra step before turning back to face him. Her posture was more loose and open than it had been all day, maybe than in all the time they had known each other. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

“Of course,” came the automatic reply. As if watching the back of a terrorist-turned-teammate was, in fact, just a matter of course. Common courtesy in Rittenhouse resistance etiquette. 

She smiled at him, quick and warm, and he fought the sudden urge to grab her and shield her from what was to come. But that wasn’t them, he didn’t get to touch her, and he knew she could hold her own. 

He let himself smile back, though, feeling more human than he had in years.


End file.
